The education given to women in the upper classes was essentially the same as that given to men.The Italian, at the time of the Renaissance, felt no scruple in putting sons and daughters alike under the same course of literary and even philological instruction.Indeed, looking at this ancient culture as the chief treasure of life, he was glad that his girls should have a share in it.We have seen what perfection was attained by the daughters of princely houses in writing and speaking Latin.Many others must at least have been able to read it, in order to follow the conversation of the day, which turned largely on classical subjects.An active interest was taken by many in Italian poetry, in which, whether prepared or improvised, a large number of Italian women, from the time of the Venetian Cassandra Fedele onwards (about the close of the fifteenth century), made themselves famous.One, indeed, Vittoria Colonna, may be called immortal.If any proof were needed of the assertion made above, it would be found in the manly tone of this poetry.Even the love-sonnets and religious poems are so precise and definite in their character, and so far removed from the tender twilight of sentiment, and from all the dilettantism which we commonly find in the poetry of women, that we should not hesitate to attribute them to male authors, if we had not clear external evidence to prove the contrary.
For, with education, the individuality of women in the upper classes was developed in the same way as that of men.Till the time of the Reformation, the personality of women out of Italy, even of the highest rank, comes forward but little.Exceptions like Isabella of Bavaria, Margaret of Anjou, and Isabella of Castile, are the forced result of very unusual circumstances.In Italy, throughout the whole of the fifteenth century, the wives of the rulers, and still more those of the Condottieri, have nearly all a distinct, recognizable personality, and take their share of notoriety and glory.To these came gradually to be added a crowd of famous women of the most varied kind; among them those whose distinction consisted in the fact that their beauty, disposition, education, virtue, and piety, combined to render them harmonious human beings.There was no question of 'woman's rights' or female emancipation, simply because the thing itself was a matter of course.